Steven Wilson (Strategic Marketing Works) is a member of Adrian’s Network and he wrote this great blog. Read it here:

Congratulations.You’ve decided to move forward on that Content Marketing program you’ve been reading and thinking about.

Now what?

First a plan.No, a strategy.Well then, maybe a calendar.YIKES!And you haven’t even put pen to paper, or more correct, fingertip to keyboard.It’s a daunting task indeed.

You want to reach, you mean you want to engage your prospects – and your customers at the same time.So your question is, what copy, you mean Content can I craft that will engage them so they share it?It has to be specific, it can’t be general, then I won’t have a niche and you know what they say, “You can’t be everything to everyone.”

So then, you need a niche, and of course one that is already not filled. Holy shit!This is not easy.I long for the good old days, when you had a client for life, and when you needed a new one you went to a trade show or inevitably met someone’s cousin at a wedding or bar mitzvah who it turned out needed something you sold.

But this Content thing is a whole new ball of wax.You have to share information with people who are not your customers, so they become your customers, and it’s all because of the freakin’ Internet.

Now buyers are disciples of the old Sy Syms, “where an educated consumer is his best customer.”Ah, now you get it.Educate the consumer about how your product or service can ease his / her pain.Which reminds me of the time I rented a tux from Syms because I had to go to my wife’s cousin’s daughter’s wedding in Jersey and the car’s AC broke as we sat in traffic on the Cross Bronx on one of those dog days of summer.

At first, you start with a Blog on your web site, based on the keywords you learned your prospects search for on Google and other lesser known search engines.There’s Google Trends to help with that.

So you get the Blog post up and like Robin Williams in his fabulous YouTube history of golf video (there are many F bombs in what I think is a FUNNY video) you don’t just do it once you do it over and over so your ranking on the Search Engines goes up and thus your prospects can easily find you on the First Page, where a recent survey revealed that 78 % of people feel that those companies are more interested in building good relationships.